Her lawyers tried to cast Michael Dippolito as an abusive husband and a thief. His record includes a 2003 Broward County fraud conviction for luring investors, many of them elderly, into a foreign currency scam.

At her last trial two years ago, jurors heard accusations that after the wedding, Dalia Dippolito:

— Tried for months to get her husband arrested and thrown in jail for a parole violation.

— Spoke with a potential Riviera Beach hit man named Larry, and also attempted to get her own gun.

— Tried to poison her spouse by spiking his tea with antifreeze.

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— Exchanged racy text messages with a boyfriend, Mike Stanley, about her intentions to “destroy” her husband.

Police got involved in late July 2009, after a different lover, Mohamed Shihadeh, called Boynton Beach Police to say he was concerned either Dippolito or her husband would wind up dead. Shihadeh immediately went to work for police as a confidential informant.

Crime caught on camera

In one video, Dippolito told Shihadeh she wanted her husband’s life to end. She handed over $1,200 that was to be used for the hit man — actually the undercover officer — to buy a gun and cellphones for the job. Dippolito also gave Shihadeh a few photos of Michael Dippolito.

The jury also watched a video of her meeting the pretend hit man and telling him she was “like 5,000 percent sure” she wanted Michael Dippolito to get two bullets to the head.

Michael Dippolito testifies during the sentencing hearing for his ex-wife, Dalia Dippolito, Friday afternoon, July 21, 2017. Dalia Dippolito was convicted last month in her third trial on charges she tried to have her husband killed in 2009. (Lannis Waters / The Palm Beach Post) POOL (Lannis Waters / Sun Sentinel)

Police made sure to keep him alive and well. Officers staged a murder scene at the couple’s home and filmed officers confronting her on the morning of Aug. 5, 2009.

“Listen, we had a report of a disturbance at your house, and there were shots fired,” an officer says with a straight face. “Is your husband Michael? OK, I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, he’s been killed.”

In its opinion, the appellate court found the judge made the right call both times. The prosecutors were allowed to cite the antifreeze incident to discredit Mohamed Shihadeh’s initial testimony that he told police he didn’t think she was serious about killing her husband.

Shihadeh wound up testifying that Dippolito once told him she went online to research a type of antifreeze that has no color or smell, and she had put it in her husband’s drink, and he spit it out.

Recent arguments

This summer, Dippolito’s attorneys asked Florida’s highest court to take the case.

They argued the Supreme Court should step in to resolve a conflict between the appellate court’s ruling in her case and legal findings in cases from other courts.

Greenlee and Rosenfeld wrote that the prosecution made a pretrial stipulation not to use the antifreeze claim, and that a “formal” notice was required to do so, based on previous court rulings in other similar cases.